Divided crates are used in industry today to transport a variety of goods. Such divided crates are commonly formed of corrugated cardboard, plastic, and wood and have an open compartment into which the goods are placed. When transporting bottles or the like, typical crates do not allow the bottles to maintain an upright or aligned configuration but instead allow for play. Such alignment is desirable particularly when crates are stacked upon one another. For example, typically, a single plastic beverage bottle can support the weight of many bottles of the same size filled with beverage if the bottle is standing upright on a flat, horizontal surface and the weight of the other bottles is applied to the closure of the single bottle and is directed substantially vertically along the symmetric axis. However, if a compressive load is applied to a conventional plastic beverage bottle along a direction other than the symmetry axis of the bottle, the bottle may buckle. This tendency of conventional plastic bottles to give way under off-axis compressive loads is particularly pronounced for large capacity bottles, such as the two-liter bottle widely used for marketing soft drinks.
In addition, crates are frequently stacked on pallets which can be lifted and moved about by lift trucks. The stacks of crates on the pallets must therefore be particularly stable in order to remain standing. A technique for interconnecting stacks of empty cases, called “cross-stacking,” is often used to improve the stability of empty cases loaded on a warehouse pallet. Cross-stacking generally involves stacking rectangular bottle cases to build up a layered structure, with each layer having cases oriented parallel to each other and with the adjacent layers being oriented at right angles to each other. Thus, since the adjacent layers are perpendicular, each case in the cross-stacked layer rests on at least two cases in the layer below. As a result, the cases of the cross-stacked layer tend to keep the cases on which they rest from moving apart from each other. The cross-stacked layers therefore stabilize the stacked structure.
Bottles can tilt away from vertical alignment upon stacking if conventional partitioned cases having low side walls are used to contain the bottles. Tilted bottles in the lower cases of a stack may cause the stack to fall. Even absent buckling, the tendency of bottles to tilt in conventional low-sided cases is not desirable. Tilting generally places an undesirably low limit on the number of tiers in a stack since the tilting of bottles in one case and may lead to instability.
A competing concern for storing and transporting beverage bottles is protecting the bottle label. Most beverage bottles sold today, whether glass or plastic, have labels attached thereto, via adhesive or screened thereon. Because of the information the label provides, it is desirable that the label stay intact and fully attached to the bottle. Of course, the label provides the nature of the bottle's content as well as the brand name and associated trademarks and goodwill of the manufacturer, among other things. In many crates which have dividers and other walls adjacent the bottles, the bottle label may be subject to rubbing, wear, or other damage resulting from contact with the dividers or walls.
The prior art has attempted to keep the bottles in an upright orientation. For example, see U.S. Pat. No. 5,351,814, assigned to the assignee of the present invention and incorporated by reference herein. While this patent discloses a case which maintains bottles in an upright position, it does not resolve the possibility that the labels may be subjected to wear from the case dividers and walls.
Therefore, there exists a need for an improved crate for storing and transporting containers such as bottles, whereby the containers are stable, upright, and do not tend to tilt from vertical. Also, the crate should be capable of stacking and cross-stacking, and the bottle labels should be protected from rubbing, wear, and other damages resulting from contact with the crate's dividers and/or walls,